February 7, 2019
As the Syrian Civil War enters its eighth year, previously overlooked ethnic and religious groups, and the divisions and alliances between them have garnered more coverage and analysis. After years of war and the break up of traditional loyalties, groups that were previously suppressed by the Syrian government have been able to reach out to…
November 5, 2018
Since the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and allied Syrian Arab and Turkmen militias concluded “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria in late March of 2018, allegations of human rights abuses have widely circulated on social media. Among these charges is the destruction of graveyards and accompanying shrines throughout Afrin. Videos and photographs have surfaced depicting Yezidi…
October 15, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
On October 8, a photograph spread throughout WhatsApp showing Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist living in Turkey, entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul through a rear entrance. He has not been seen since, with credible reports that he was either murdered or kidnapped by Saudi officials. Later, a video that this photograph was taken from…
March 19, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
On March 16, 2018, at around 21:00 local time (UTC+2), an alleged Turkish airstrike hit the main hospital of the Kurdish-majority city of Afrin, in northwestern Syria, where Turkey and allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups are engaging in an offensive against the People’s Protection Units (Kurdish: Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG). The YPG and the…
July 2, 2017
On June 28, 2017, two Turkish media outlets published footage of a location within Syrian territory where the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK, from Turkish Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri) “allegedly will build a base” if it “enters” the Idlib governorate. Firstly, A Haber broadcasted a short reportage with “impressions” from Idlib. A Haber is a nationwide Turkish…
May 22, 2017
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
A video and a report published by the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency (AA) presents an alternative course of events for May 16, 2017. This article analyses both the visual evidence and the written account. In the described course of events in both accounts, AA largely blames the pro-Kurdish/anti-Erdoğan protesters for the violence. However, a closer look at the presented imagery and the statements made in the video and the report reveals that some claims made by AA are wrong, others are misleading in the given context and some are not supported by facts.
May 18, 2017
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
On Tuesday, May 16, nearly a dozen people were injured after a clash between pro-Kurdish/anti-Erdoğan protesters and a group that included both Erdoğan supporters and Turkish security officials, including bodyguards of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The clash happened outside of the Turkish Ambassador’s residence in Washington D.C., and marks the second instance since 2016 where Turkish security officials were…
February 12, 2017
The Turkish military operation dubbed ‘Euphrates Shield’ (ES) began on August 24, 2016, aiming to clear an area of 5,000 square kilometres of Syrian territory, and is conducted jointly with Syrian rebel factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Within four months, over 2,000 square kilometres were captured from so-called Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish…
October 21, 2016
On the night from October 19 to October 20, the Turkish Air Force bombed positions allegedly of the People’s Protection Units (Kurdish: Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG) in Syria’s Aleppo governorate. This is a brief overview of open source information on the incident. Geolocation In total, the Turkish Air Force dropped 26 bombs on 18 different targets,…
October 13, 2016
As Turkey pushes toward becoming a major player in the UAV industry, seeing more of their drones on satellite imagery beyond test airfields should come as no surprise. DigitalGlobe space snapshots from October 2015 captured one of the country’s latest drones, the Bayraktar TB2, complete with its ground control station, parked in front of an…
Subscribe to our email list to receive a weekly selection of stories published by Bellingcat during the previous week, along with links to our favorite examples of open source research around the web.
Along with our published content, we will update our readers on events that our staff and contributors are involved with, such as noteworthy interviews and training workshops.
You can support the work of Bellingcat by donating through the below link: